


Stull Lake

by liliaeth



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-13
Updated: 2011-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-22 14:25:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liliaeth/pseuds/liliaeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A stranger came to Lawrence</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stull Lake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enigmaticblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigmaticblue/gifts).



It was fall in Lawrence when the stranger came. Steven had been on top of the pole, checking the last of the set of cables when he saw the man walking up the road. The stranger wasn’t dressed for travel, he had a leather coat that he was holding over his shoulder, and a sweatshirt jacket tied around his waist. Leaving him dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans.  
The way he looked, it was almost as if he’d stepped out of his door one day, and hadn’t even bothered to grab anything other than his coat before leaving.  
Steve knew better than to yell a warning, noise attracted Croats. He pulled a mirror out of his pocket and quickly signaled to his brother that something was up. He watched down as Marty lifted his gun, his hand held over his eyes to watch the man coming closer. If the guy was a Croat, Stevie knew he was in deep shit, unless his brother managed to shoot the guy before he got too close.

But the stranger didn’t speed up. He barely even reacted to the gun, Marty glared at him, and the stranger would have probably kept on moving if something hadn’t caught his attention on the ground.

“Stay back.” Marty hissed.

“Geez, are you guys always this tense?” The stranger asked. Steve quickly slid down. Staying up on a pole might help against cougars and wild dogs, but it wouldn’t do a thing against Croats.

How could they know if the guy was infected? The plague took a while before it hit in. Stevie couldn’t see any obvious injuries, or blood on him, but that didn’t mean anything.

He didn’t have the black eyes either, Stevie whispered a quick _Christo_ , but the man didn’t react. The guy mostly just looked tired, like someone who’d been walking for quite a while and was hoping to find a place to rest his head. Steve threw him a bottle of holy water. The stranger took a long deep drink, by the time he came back up for air, Marty was already holding out his hand for the bottle. You didn't throw away stuff like that, not if you had any sense.

“What do you want?” Marty asked.

The guy seemed confused, not answering right away, but thinking about it.

“I… I don’t know.” He looked sunburned, so he wasn’t a vampire. Bloodsuckers might not die from the sun, but they didn’t like it. He could still be a ghoul or a skinwalker or…  
hell he could even be a werewolf for what any of them knew.”I don’t know.” He repeated

Stevie wasn’t even sure why they took the man with them. Past the empty houses, and unused roads. Past the wrecks of cars and remnants of a life long gone. Lawrence used to be a large city. People from all across the state, and even the country, used to travel here to study at the local college.

Now, anyone sane avoided the city itself. It was filled with ghosts, leftover croats still slipped out of the cracks and abandoned buildings when you least expected it. There used to be a nest of vampires hiding out in what used to be a McDonalds. Stevie remembered being a kid when going to McDonalds had been a treat, even then. His parents had wanted him and Marty to eat healthy, so it was a once a month thing. It had been fun, playing in the ballpen, while Marty crawled over the bars as if he were the monkey that his ears made him look like. Mom would sit by the side of the play area. She’d wear her comfy pants. That’s what she liked to call them. She said that she would die before she’d dress up to go to old Mickey D. Stevie preferred her like that anyway. It was better than the suit-dress she wore to work, that made her look all strict. Mom wasn’t meant to be strict, she liked smiling too much for that. Or she had, before Famine came.

Mom hadn’t smiled even once since Dad. Now, mom held watch at the side of the road by the Ford while she waited for him and Marty to return. There was no visible reaction on her face when she saw the stranger at their side. But Stevie could feel her tension rise.

The city of Lawrence was a city of ghosts, but the ruins and remains of what had once been the sixth largest city in the state were still filled with useful objects, storage spaces and ripe for shopping. Oh sure, most of the good shops had been looted ages ago, but if you made the effort of going house by house, you could still find places left over by previous searchers filled with hidden treasures. Stevie knew this all too well. It’s a big part of what his family did. They had the license for it. Foraging, hunting and keeping the wires in working order, all a part of the Costello Family business.

It was a dangerous job, but it was one needed by the people of Lawrence Safehaven. The wall was newly built only ten minutes away from what used to be the city centre. Well newly built, they’d used what had been left of buildings and put in escape routes, gathering places that were easy to defend. The place was warded against every kind of evil known to man, and several that Stevie wouldn’t have the first clue how to identify.

Home sweet home, long as you didn’t mind the twenty foot walls with twenty-four seven sentries, ready to use their machine gun on you if you showed the slightest sign of being a threat.  
They took the car to get there, Mom wouldn’t think of wasting gas for anything they could do on foot, but that didn’t make it any less useful to carry whatever new supplies she and ‘HIM’ had managed to find.

Stevie didn’t like HIM. He was taking up space that belonged to Dad, even if Dad was gone. But he knew his mother liked HIM, no matter what Stevie or Marty might think about it all. HE didn’t make mom smile, not yet, but ever since HE showed up, mom had started letting her hair down again. She snapped at them less easily and sometimes, sometimes Stevie had seen her give a soft look at HIM, like she used to give to Dad.

HE kept staring at the stranger. Stevie wasn’t sure if he saw it right when HE crossed himself as soon as he saw the man. HIS eyes opened wide, making him look like a character from one of those old Japanese movies that the TV station keeps replaying. HE hurried to shut his mouth, leaving the stranger the place in the front, while HE got in the back, along with Marty and Stevie.

It was weird.

They drove past the new lake, the one that had formed where the crater had been from the final battle. Stevie always whispered a quick prayer of apology for coming so close when they passed the lake. The lake was a holy place, and even Marty knew better than to try and swim in it.

The stranger got out of the car when they neared the fences. Cars weren’t allowed inside without a thorough inspection, too many monsters could slip in through them.

The guards looked at the strangers, one of them was staring as much as HE was. “Is that him?” Clark asked.

Jenner seemed to know what he was talking about. Stevie was starting to think he’d go into a vamp house to get one of their sunglasses, if it could pay for an explanation. No one seemed to want to bother to give him one.

The stranger looked away, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun on the metal doors and seemingly unaware of what to do with his hands. It was as if he wanted to grab for something probably a gun. It was lucky he didn’t have one on him. The safe haven didn’t like strangers with gun. Not since War passed by.

It was hard to trust strangers, hard not to remember Dad pulling a gun on him and Marty, telling them they weren’t his kids, demanding them to give him his children back. Marty had been begging Dad to see it was just them. The harder he begged, the angrier Dad got.

And then Mom showed up and had to shoot him, to save them.

It wasn’t Dad’s fault. It was War. Sure the authorities could talk all they wanted about how the mysterious cases of insanity were just a prelude to the Croatoan Virus. But by then people weren’t listening to the law no more. Not after Houston got bombed.

They’d sent soldiers after it was all over. After the big battle, after all that was left of it was the crater, the crater and the tomb in the middle, the tomb that was now surrounded by water. The soldiers had faced off with the militia, and in the end, the soldiers backed off. Nobody wanted more people to die.

They called it Stull Lake now, after the cemetery that had been there before the battle. They called it the place of Lucifer’s Fall. They said that’s why the lake was Holy. Stevie wasn’t sure what to think of that.

Stevie wished the stranger would speak up.

“Why did you return?” Clark finally asked.

The stranger seemed spooked.

“I didn’t, that… wasn’t me. Just a dick wearing my meatsuit.” He muttered the words as if they were dragged out of a pit in his gut and he had to throw them out.  
Stevie understood about possession. There had been loads of demons in Lawrence before the battle. Many of them had remained even after the angels left. If the stranger had had one of them inside of _them_ , then he was to be pities; or so the old lady from down the block always said. Of course she’d know, the demon that had used her body had made her kill her own grandchildren. Kids in school said that the demon had made the old women gut them and serve them up as diner for their parents. The teacher said that was nonsense, but what did she know?

Jenner placed his hand on the stranger’s shoulder.

“Lawrence welcomes the Righteous Man. Mister Winchester“

The stranger winced at his words, closed his eyes and nodded.

Stevie followed the stranger in the course of the next week. The man seemed to be looking for something ,for answers. Stevie wasn’t sure what he wanted to know, and why he didn’t just ask. But something about the man held him back. Winchester was a quiet man. Many of the women in the city tried to lure him to their beds, but he refused them all. It was like he was waiting for something that wouldn’t come, as if he was listening for a voice that remained silent.

It was the pastor who revealed the stranger’s identity to the town, when he read out of the Winchester gospels. Stevie slapped himself when he realized he’d missed the obvious.  
The angels had spread the word of the gospels, of Samuel Winchester, the abomination and Antichrist who had freed Lucifer and become his Vessel only to struggle free during the battle and allow the archangel Michael to kill the devil.

And of Dean Winchester, the Righteous Man, the Michael Sword. The Vessel of the archangel Michael who had been risen from the dead, to be Michael’s weapon as he faced his fallen brother.

Dean Winchester who had been born in Lawrence and who was here now, with them.

The pastor kept wanting him to talk about the angels, but the stranger, Dean, steadfastly refused. He said that they didn’t want to know.

From the look in his eyes, Stevie didn’t dare disagree.

There was sadness in those eyes, a sense of a broken soul. Stevie had never been interested in scripture before, but somehow the Winchester gospels were different, more fun to read. They were about fighting monsters and demons, about things that mattered instead of some guy preaching to crowds thousands of years ago.  
The stranger seemed lost. Stevie couldn’t blame him, he’d probably be lost too, if anything ever happened to Marty.

So in the end, Stevie made the choice for him. He was about to head out when he stopped in front of the stranger. “Want to come along?” was all he asked. The stranger didn’t even ask where. He just got up and followed, past the memorials, past the market and up to the gates.

They took guns with them, guns that they had to go pick up at the guard’s office. They weren’t allowed in town.

The man, Dean, didn’t even seem curious when Stevie didn’t drive them up to town, instead he took them to Stull lake. You could see over the smooth unnatural waters, empty of fish, and look up at the small island in the middle of the lake.

Dean didn’t ask what was there, he just waded into the water and started swimming, further and further till he reached the island. Stevie didn’t follow.

After all, a man deserved his privacy, when he said goodbye to his brother. Stevie wished he could have done the same to his Dad. But it was hard to say goodbye to a body, when the cops are dragging it away.

Goodbyes were hard. But then, what wasn’t?

 

 

finis

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: The four horsemen aren't stopped.  
> betaed by Just Ruth


End file.
